Chapter 20
LUCA
For a while after I just lie there quietly with Noel, and listen to the storm wear itself out above us.
My head is tucked into the space between his shoulder and neck, one of my favorite bits of him that usually sports one bruise of mine or another.
Where I love to lay claim and waste both, like I can dig right into the jugular and lay him bare.
All of him, all of me—it’s always been this.
The almost rabid need to flay him that used to scare me, but doesn’t anymore.
Because he gets it. Because he has that same need in reverse: to be torn apart.
We started with this. Do we end with it, too? Is this core, reciprocal need of ours what ultimately propels us towards each other?
Doesn’t matter right this minute, those are questions for another time.
Too much to contemplate on top of everything else, because I need him and this.
Right now it’s just comfort. It’s just him and my tears drying on his skin.
His arms around me and his fingers stroking and detangling my hair that’s now drying in a wavy mess, and beneath my ear is his steady heartbeat and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. And even though everything’s awful, I feel a little better anyway.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My voice is hoarse and wet and awful.
He shifts beneath me a little. “Sorry nothing. You’re good.”
“I shouldn’t have done that.” Not that I’m showing much remorse for it. Lying here naked with him. Making absolutely no move to dress or air out the house. Will probably get in trouble for this, like Demi needs any more of my shit. Jesus, what is wrong with me.
He yawns. “Done what?”
“Come in and just—done all that. Fuck you. Fall to pieces afterwards. Whatever the hell this is.” I clap my hand over my swollen eyes and rub. “Just, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be the solid one here.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Noel sounds bemused. “What, you’re not allowed to have feelings or be sad?”
“You’re going through a lot right now.”
“We both are. You’ve got a whole ass baby on the way and this fucked up arrangement, for starters.”
“But I don’t want to fall apart on you.” I raise my face to his. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I want to take care of you, not leave you cleaning up the pieces. Like before. I’m trying not to mess everything up.”
He tilts his head at me. As always, he looks gorgeous in the aftermath of our lovemaking.
Whether it’s rough or gentle. The flush in his otherwise fair skin, the big, dark-lashed doe eyes gazing back at me, his hair framing his perfectly adorable face.
He’s playing with the cut inside his lip again; I catch glimpses of his pink tongue.
“So you have to be perfect?” he remarks. “Have zero needs of your own?”
“It sounds dumb when you put it that way,” I admit.
“You’re an idiot.” He says this affectionately, a smile playing along the edges of his mouth. He reaches up and tweaks my cheek. “Stop frowning so hard. You’re gonna need Botox for those elevens at this rate.”
“You’re so mean.” But it has the desired effect, because now I’m smiling too, at least a little.
“Seriously, though.” He palms the side of my face. “You wanna talk about it? What happened? Or would you rather leave it?”
I turn my head and lay a kiss on his hand. Resist the urge to lave my tongue against it, taste all the salty sweat and more. Fuck I love his musk, his taste, his everything. I bury my face beneath his smooth underarm. “My dad is dying.” It comes out muffled.
“Oh.” Noel’s voice is carefully neutral. “Luca.”
I save him before he says something we both regret.
“That’s not why I’m upset. I mean, it is.
I—I don’t know. I don’t know what to feel.
About that part.” Grief on delay, or maybe I’m just settling well into denial.
Some part of me had really thought he’d be forever sustained on anger, animated like a zombie by it.
“It’s his heart. Apparently the doctor’s gave him a grim prognosis.
I don’t know. It’s not just that, though. ”
“What happened?” Noel’s trying to fish me out of his armpit.
“Him and my uncle fucking tag teamed me. Not both at once, but...” I sit up. “Shit. We should clean up before Demi—”
“Forget her.” Noel touches my arm. “Talk to me.”
“I’m serious. We need to open some windows or something, at least try to pretend we didn’t have sex here. It’s the pregnancy hormones or whatever. They give her a crazy sense of smell and it makes her sick.”
The guilt’s back, the fucks are back. Moments ago all I’d needed was to lose myself in my beautiful boy, but now here’s the post-nut clarity, ruining everything.
I’m a dickhead and I couldn’t just not violate at least one of the very few things my wife asked of me.
Fucking—all I ever do is mess up. Guess Dad’s got one thing right. I am defective.
“Luca.” Noel’s voice shatters my ruminating. “I am almost a thousand percent positive she’s not coming back anytime soon, okay? Stop freaking out.”
“Why? Did she say something to you?”
“Uh...” All of a sudden he’s cagey, fumbling with the blanket where it’s bunched up on his stomach. “Not exactly. It’s more what I overheard.”
This sort of cancels out all the angst I’d been about to unleash on him.
It’s curiosity, mostly, something to focus on that isn’t my own confused misery.
Which I’m already sick of, anyway. Lifelong theme I’m ready to change, soon as I figure out how.
“And?” I say when he doesn’t expound further. “Go on.”
He sits up too, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so when you dumped me off here, no one answered the door. Which, y’know, that was fine.
I just let myself in because the door wasn’t locked.
But I couldn’t find Demi anywhere, so I was freaking out, thinking she was like, I dunno, dying of a miscarriage somewhere—”
“Noel,” I say impatiently. “What did you hear?”
“If you’d let me tell the story,” he complains. “So anyway, I find her on the back deck. On the phone. To someone she calls honey. Well, I think his name’s actually Jake or Josh or something, but—well, they sounded pretty intimate.”
Huh.
I process that for a moment, the idea Demi might have a partner.
It doesn’t bother me—or maybe bother is the wrong word.
I have exactly zero designs on her, no possessiveness whatsoever.
Any love I have for her is strictly platonic.
There is a part of me that’s glad, actually, because if there’s anyone who deserves some happiness in this fucked up arrangement we’ve got, it’s probably her.
I don’t want her to be alone, a single mom.
It was part of the reason I moved back in with her in the first place.
What’s niggling at me is the fact that she didn’t bother to tell me.
Unless he’s such a recent development that when I asked weeks ago, she could answer honestly that there wasn’t anyone, but that doesn’t seem quite right.
How does one go from denying the possibility of a man ever expressing interest in a pregnant woman to having a partner within the space of weeks?
I think of her sudden interest in outings in the last month, going out on week nights, staying out on weekends—which I could reasonably attribute to feeling better, the hyperemesis subsiding enough that she could return to the real world and some semblance of normalcy.
Nothing I hold against her either way, but now I wonder if she really was staying over with her sister and family all those weekends. Or with a lover instead.
And if she’s doing all of that—then why did Noel get shafted by her the way he did? I haven’t gotten to meet this guy. I’m apparently not even supposed to know he exists.
“She said she was gonna go see him later.” Noel’s still talking. “So, yeah. I don’t think we have to worry about her coming home anytime soon.” He catches my eye, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth as he always does. “Are you okay?”
I don’t get a chance to process the question or what any of this means to me, because suddenly Amelia’s tags are jingling in the hallway beyond the door, toenails rapidly tapping the floor as she bolts past. I can’t actually hear the keys in the front door from back here, but I know that’s what’s happening, anyway.
“So much for her not coming home early,” I say, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed.
We haven’t even showered yet. The room reeks of sex.
The whole fucking house will, according to Demi, and that’s my fault, but I’m feeling some kind of way so I don’t even care anymore.
Least I’ll be honest about it, which is more than I can say for her at this point.
I yank on my jeans and a clean, dry T-shirt as Noel watches, frozen, from the bed. “Wait,” he says. He’s sensed my shift in mood and is clearly alarmed by it. “Maybe I’m wrong, then. Maybe it really was just her coworker or something.”
I toss his clothes at him. “Get dressed.”
“Luca, no—”
Too late, I’m out in the narrow hallway where I come face-to-face with my wife. She sort of stops dead when her gaze alights on me, whatever tuneless ditty she was humming dying on her lips. It’s a weird little standoff—she didn’t expect me to be here.
“Hi,” she says awkwardly. “I thought you’d be at Noel’s by now.”
“No,” I say.
“It’s dark in here,” she remarks, reaching for a nearby light switch. “Is the power dead?”
“Yeah. For a couple of hours now.”
“Shit.” She says it with feeling. “I should’ve just stayed out.”
“With who?” I ask. “Your new boyfriend?” It comes out angrier than I mean it, but then I think I’m angrier than I realize. Really mad, actually.
Demi’s head jerks, her long, glossy hair sliding like a living thing about her shoulders as she gives me a startled look. “What on earth are you talking about?”